Amid the recent crackdown on Russian influence in American media, a group of former Trump advisers and operatives have quietly helped build a pro-Russian website that frequently spreads debunked conspiracy theories about the war in Ukraine, election fraud and vaccines. read more
This fall, Ohioans' ballots will falsely inform them that an amendment to END gerrymandering would actually REQUIRE gerrymandering. A brazen lie, now greenlit by the Ohio Supreme Court. It is, as one dissenting justice put it, a "fraud upon the voters." read more
Donald Trump has already found a new town to harass with racist claims that immigrants have overrun it, and it's in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. read more
JD Vance blamed Democrats on Monday for a second possible assassination attempt on Donald Trump, saying: "The big difference between conservatives and liberals is that no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months." He added: "I'd say that's pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric and needs to cut this crap out. Somebody's gonna get hurt by it, and it's gonna destroy this country." read more
Blaming immigrants for eating pets was an American urban legend years before Donald Trump spread the rumor about Haitians in Ohio. Following the pattern of other urban legends, such as the "rat in the Coke bottle" and the "Vanishing Hitchhiker," the legend that newly settled immigrants are eating dogs and cats has been around for decades.
The Biden administration inserted 20,000 migrants into a town of 60,000. Car accidents are up, an uptick in disease, schools overloaded, etc. and the left will not acknowledge the problems this has created.
Posted by BellRinger
The uptick in disease claim is false:
What's more, Vance's dishonesty about Springfield goes well beyond the pet-eating scam and strays into other really dangerous territory. Vance has repeatedly cited a need to draw attention to other problems supposedly inflicted by Haitians, again and again claiming that "communicable diseases" are "on the rise" and have "skyrocketed."newrepublic.com
. . . But it's very hard to square Vance's claims of "skyrocketing" diseases with official health data from Clark County, home to Springfield. That data shows that reportable communicable diseases in the county"excluding Covid-19, which dwarfs all others and surged during the pandemic for many other reasons"actually have declined in a broad sense. Despite a rise in 2022 that was the exception, they were actually lower in 2023 than they were in 2021 (when the Haitian influx gained steam), which in turn was lower than 2020 (before their arrivals really got going). The overall trend from 2020 through the end of 2023 is downward, not upward.
"If you look at all reportable diseases as a whole, they're actually going down," Chris Cook, the health commissioner of Clark County, told me.
Vance has also specifically suggested that cases of tuberculosis and HIV are rising or even soaring. But according to the county's data, there was one case of T.B. in 2021, three cases in 2022, and four cases in 2023. OK, that sort of constitutes "rising." But it's a tiny handful of cases out of a county population of 135,000.
What about HIV? Well, in 2022"the latest year of finalized data"there were around nine cases of new HIV diagnoses per 100,000 people in Clark County. That is up from five cases in 2020, but that nine cases is barely higher than the current rate across all of Ohio, which had seven new cases per 100,000 people in 2022. And if you look at the numbers of people living with HIV as a condition"as opposed to new cases of it"there are fewer per 100,000 in Clark County than there are statewide, Cook points out.
Every case of T.B. and HIV is serious. But there is no plausible way to describe any of that in Vance's hyperbolic terms. Indeed, Cook describes those diseases as getting only a "slight bump" and suggests that singling out individual diseases is not particularly illuminating to begin with.
"As a measure of total health of a population," Cook told me, "individual diseases" are less informative than "trends of groups of diseases." And those trends are down. It's hard to see how anyone could seriously cast all this as a severe blight caused by Haitians.
"in June 2019, the then-president spoke to ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, who asked an important hypothetical: If foreigners offered Trump campaign officials information ahead of the 2020 election, should they accept the dirt or should they call the FBI?"
Since Russia helped Trump/GOP in 2016, Republicans wanted to keep their options open:
Asha Rangappa
@AshaRangappa_
There's no evidence that the Biden administration did anything with these emails, but it's a good time to remind everyone that in 2019, Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have required campaigns to report foreign election assistance to the FBI
Senate GOP blocks bill to require campaigns report foreign election assistance
06/13/19
thehill.com
In addition to the bomb threats, there have been instances of vandalism, which are obviously not being done by foreign actors:
Frustrated and mad;' String of vandalism forces small businesses to close their doors
www.whio.com
Haitian families in Ohio under attack as racist claims spread
haitiantimes.com
Virginia man charged with threatening to kill Kamala Harris
Frank Carillo of Winchester, Virginia, posted a series of violent threats about the vice president last month using an alias on a conservative social media site, authorities said.
www.nbcnews.com
There were more stories but I stopped at these:
Man wanted by police arrested near residence of Vice President Kamala Harris, gun and ammo found in car
www.cnbc.com
Florida man arrested after allegedly making death threats against Biden
www.cbsnews.com
Pennsylvania man charged with threatening Biden in online video
www.cnn.com
Billings man charged with making threats to kill U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, threats against President Joe Biden
www.justice.gov
Utah man suspected of threatening President Joe Biden shot and killed as FBI served warrant
apnews.com
Wichita man who threatened to kill President Biden sentenced to 21 months in jail
kansasreflector.com
Michigan man charged with threatening to kill Biden, Harris, officials in X posts
thehill.com
FTA: "Remember when Trump defended his followers for shouting, "hang Mike Pence"? Vance apparently doesn't."
Apparently Vance also doesn't remember this Trump supporter either:
Jan. 6 defendant arrested near Obama's home had guns and 400 rounds of ammunition in his vanwww.nbcnews.com
June 30, 2023
A Trump supporter who stormed the Capitol wearing a "Make Space Great Again" hat had two guns and 400 rounds of ammunition in his van when he was arrested Thursday near former President Barack Obama's home, federal authorities said Friday.
Taranto showed up at Obama's residence on Thursday after former President Donald Trump posted screenshots on his Truth Social platform that featured a purported address for Obama's home in Washington. Taranto's account reposted Trump's post.
"We got these losers surrounded!" Taranto wrote on Telegram yesterday. "See you in hell, Podesta's and Obama's!"
Vance also seems to have forgotten Paul Pelosi's attacker, who was really looking for Nancy but she wasn't home at the time, but how Vance could have forgotten about him is unclear since Trump brought him just the other day in a stump speech.
As you may know by now I take an interest in PA politics, especially stories from Pittsburgh and the surrounding area, and because of that interest I dug into this story a little more:
Local GOP lawmaker pushes back on Trump's attacks on Haitians in Charleroi, PA
Donald Trump falsely accused Haitian immigrants of eating pets in an Ohio town. Now, a Pennsylvania Republican lawmaker is calling out Trump's comments about Charleroi's immigrant community.
keystonenewsroom.com
Turmoil erupts in Pennsylvania town after Trump spreads false claims about Haitians there
www.rawstory.com
Charleroi, Pennsylvania, residents remain divided on impact of immigrant influx
www.cbsnews.com
Ron Filipkowski
@RonFilipkowski
So today we learn that Trump's Health Care Czar had his 1,374th extramarital affair and his pick for Governor of NC is a Black Nazi with a trans porn fetish.